Angry patriots

[6][7] Political experts in Russia and in the United States have described the far-right ultranationalist opposition to Putin as possibly "the most serious challenge" to the Russian regime.

[12] The "club" also prominently includes Girkin's fellow Donetsk People's Republic leader Pavel Gubarev and Russian nationalist writer Maxim Kalashnikov.

[10] Prominent Russian liberal opposition figure Alexei Navalny said before his 2020 poisoning that the Kremlin was "far more afraid of ultra-nationalists than they were of him", noting that "[the ultranationalists] use the same imperial rhetoric as Putin does, but they can do it much better than him".

[6] In mid-2022, after the collapse of the Russian frontline in the northeast due to the Ukrainian 2022 Kharkiv counteroffensive, the ultranationalist faction reacted with rage and frustration.

[6] On 2 April, Vladlen Tatarsky, a former militant who fought in the war in Donbas and later became a pro-Russia milblogger in the "angry patriot" sphere, was assassinated in the 2023 Saint Petersburg bombing.

In July 2023, Igor Girkin was arrested and charged with "inciting extremism" by Russian authorities, ending a long period over which he was considered "untouchable" due to his history and government connections.

[19] On 23 August 2023, exactly two months after the rebellion,[20] Prigozhin was killed along with nine other people when a business jet crashed in Tver Oblast, north of Moscow.